Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Making the right choice when it comes to choosing a webhosting is never an easy task, neither for a rookie, nor for a pro. My research revolves around the all-encompassing topic of webhosting, solutions integration and points of view that you might not think of. My mission is to highlight these solutions and serve them to you, for whatever site you build – a tiny personal blog, an important volunteer project or a sizable business.Without the right kind of hosting, it is nearly impossible to have your website or blog perform optimally, especially as you begin to receive more daily visitors and update your site with content. If you want to make your website as successful as possible, then you'll need to have access to the right kind of hosting services.

Up-time is important because when the server is "down" your store is closed, and clients cannot order or view products, or even contact you via your site.

Up-time is often measured in nines. "Five nines" means 99.999%, which means roughly 5 minutes and 15 seconds per year of downtime. Interestingly, a percentage of "three nines", that is 99.9% means an annual downtime of 8 hours and 45 minutes. When the server is down your website is closed.Imagine your prospective landlord happily telling you that over the next year your office space would be locked tight at random times over the year, for a total of almost 9 hours. No sales, no customers browsing – nothing. As a result of several technical issues, an uptime of up to 99.999% may not be feasible, hence a server with an uptime guarantee of up to 99.99% is highly recommended.Up-time = Your Online Business Hours

Technical Support

Arguably one of the most important features of your hosting space is back end support. If you aren’t able to keep your site live or to fix problems as they arise, then the other features are pointless.The Internet is open every hour of every day. It doesn’t close or have business hours so your Web host tech support shouldn’t either. If you are browsing the Internet at 11:30 p.m. and realize that your site isn’t working properly, you should be able to call Tech Support and get a real person and get a solution. Otherwise, they aren’t really support.Often support is available by email, chat or phone. If you’re new to Web hosting, having phone support is crucial. There will always be something that you need to call and clarify.

Storage Space

Unless you’re selling downloadable training videos, streaming live video feeds, or have a catalog of thousands of products with high resolution images, you probably don’t have to worry about this. Many basic sites, even with catalogs of products and downloadable documents are less than a few hundred megabytes. Hence the issue of unlimited storage space is out of question for most website owners - don't spend an extra dime for 'unlimited storage' which every well informed person knows is technically untrue!

Bandwidth

Bandwidth measures the amount of data transferred from your online site to clients downloading it. Often highlighted as a primary feature by Web hosting companies, but for the average site this isn’t a significant concern. Similar to storage space, unless your business sells downloadable video and high resolution images, you won’t need to worry about this.

Ecommerce

This is where larger hosting sites are important. The smaller hosting companies don’t offer the quantity or quality of tools that the big players can. Shopping cart software, ecommerce tools, database builders and secure servers are all crucial to the success of your online business.

Blog Friendly

Some hosting companies have one click installation of WordPress blog software which is a great feature, especially if you’re doing your own install.

Number of Emails, FTP accounts / Databases

With any luck, your business will grow over time and you’ll add more staff. With the right host and package, you can give each staff member (and department) their own domain-based email address. Each blog requires its own database, and it’s a good idea to assign unique ftp accounts to different sections of your site (blog, product catalog, general website).Because their offering is so similar to the others, many companies try to differentiate with things that don’t really matter or are completely worthless. Here are some examples:

Once you get your shortlist of two or three finalists run this simple test to see how good they really are. Even the best company will get complaints, but notice the volume of complaints. Simply Google the name of the hosting company you’re considering with the term "complaint" or "sucks" after it. For example: "godaddy sucks." Don’t forget the quotation marks, and please excuse the choice of words. To see what people are saying, you need to Google with the words they use.

Costs

At the end of the day, you need to find a website host that is affordable. When you have found multiple web hosting services that meet your needs and are reliable, look into price. Ask each web host for a quote. This will give you a ballpark estimate of their costs. You want to make sure that you are getting everything that you need, but for the lowest price.

Payment/Order Currency

Does the Web host accept your local currency? Only a handful of web hosting companies may be able accept payments in your local currency. In most cases this turns out to be more affordable in the long run, since you'll be able to avoid exchange and other unecessary transaction costs. When transaction security is of utmost important, direct bank deposits, and bank transfers are considered very much secured compared to any other mode of payment.

Considering these all-important points, I will like to recommend DuruSystems Integrated Services. They guarantee quality web hosting services with complete online tools integration.